Happy Holidays to start.  Hope everyone is having a good time.  My wife had been sneaking out for a month to work on a secret project and turns out she was doing some woodworking.  She made me a canoe oar from scratch, like the old voyageurs used.  Really friggin’ cool and amazing gift!

Over the holidays my play time is certainly down some, what with the family events.  That said, I have both my Sorc and Power Tech at 60 and wondering about what’s next.

SWTOR changed a bit in the last patch, where commendations were streamlined.  You swap ’em for gear and there are 3 types.  Basic, Elite and Ultimate.  How you get them is an interesting story.

Basic are what you get from leveling and daily quests.  There are 13 dailies on Rishi and Yavin combined, though you really only want to bother with Yavin’s 8 due to travel time.  You get 4 per quest.  Gear is worth 80, 100 or 120 per.  When I hit 60, I had about 950 in bank due to previous dailies/leveling.  Suffice it to say, I swapped into 186 gear pretty quick.  Then I started looking at going to 192 gear, which you can get from Elite commendations.  Here’s the rub though…

Hard Mode level 60 dungeons only award basic commendations.  Hard mode 55 dungeons give Elite.  The power curve between 55 and 60 is significant, such that 2 people can easily run a level 55 hardmode.  Sure, there’s the odd good drop at the end of a heroic but due to itemization and you already being at 186 in the dungeon, the odds are pretty low.  So dungeons are pretty much not worth anything right now.

Meaning all you have as group content is raids, which are on a weekly lockout.  I’m guessing this is a bug of sorts and a future patch will fix it.  In the meantime, I’ll be focusing on other activities.

Which for the most part means making credits.  I think I’ve made about 10 million since the expansion launched, across both the main players.  Artifice isn’t making much money, outside of farming due to the material costs of Midlithe.  Cybertech is raking in the money though.  That, plus finally maxing out companion faction (gifts) means I’ve flipped for a good profit.  It’s funny because I remember thinking that 1 million was a pipedream and here I am sitting pretty.  It’s a decent side diversion but I’m hoping for more.